Russians to the Rescue? Gulf Oil: Let's Swallow Our Pride!

Today, July 9th is Day 81 of the great oil disaster in the gulf. Nothing has worked yet to halt the monstrous flow created by our insatiable oil appetite and the cataclysmic explosion of the British drilling platform Deepwater Horizon. And now a new idea  that is floating on the Red horizon is being reported this morning by BBC reporter and science correspondant Katie Moskvitch. Anatoly Sagalevich of Russia's Shirshov Institute of Oceanograhy says that he has had informal conversations with a BP rep on tiny Russian subs with high tech abilites.  The pair of small Russian subs that can dive to 6,000 meters  and "would be able to cap the leak in the Gulf of Mexico" Currently these high tech submarines are deployed to the bed of the Baikal Sea, the world's deepeest lake  in their search for gas hydrates, an alternative fuel source. Yevgenii Chernyaev, the skipper of  the Mir-2, one of the two Russian exploration subs, says "Our subs are unique, there are two of them and they can submerge and work simultaneously. Also, they are powerful enought to work with any other additional equipment."   The Russains say that  if they are provided all the detail of the disaster they can build a special device to attach to their subs and help.  So why are we waiting? Is it that American and British pride is in our way? Are we still stung by the success of the Soviet Union's 1957 Sputnik flight that shocked our science community when the "communists" sent a man made object into Earth orbit, a technological first? My thought: If  Russian scientists can plug the leak in the bottom of the Gulf, welcome the Russians from the highest levels of  our government and bring'em now to help combat the worst environmental catastrophe in our American History. And lest we forget it is all one planet which means it is their oil spill too! This is not the time to play politics and bury ourselves in the nasty abyss of  our old Soviet Union  fears.  Bring on the Mirs (the Russian subs) and their team of specialists.